City within a City

I've been thinking a lot about how the Airport is a City within a City. Cities are always in relationship to their contextual environments. A truly effective city is a dense heart of efficient and complex, spirited and contradictory, human habitat. Cities may recycle and reuse their energies and products, but they continue to draw the vast majority of their energy from the natural resources which surround them. Non-renewable energy sources and renewable energy sources yielding power and life to sustain the city and it's people come from the hills, the forests, the lakes, the mountains, the ocean, the desert, the sun, and the wind; water for life, and coal, oil, photovoltaic cells, wind turbines, to name a few for electricity, transport, and industry. The Airport, the globally distributed City within a City, as a functioning city, also feeds off its surroundings, the city of its outer context. The people, energy, financial support, products and shipping orders, all fuel and support the purpose for the Airport's existence and sustenance.

So, the Airport really is like a contemporary city in its internal habitat provisions (shelter, food, mobility, commerce, even space for arts), and also in its patterns of external resource consumption. The Airport, as a City within a City, looks towards the cities around it as consumption resources.

The Airport, the City within a City, is like an interiorized city, bubbled into a container whose own structure is that of a city. But to disembark from the destructive paradigm of continuous "natural capital" consumption furthered in urbanized locales around the world, the Airport City within a City could be seen as more progressive, even more sustainable in theory, as in a more directly symbiotic, interconnected relationship with its "natural environment", the surrounding city, than the original city is itself. In consideration of the modern city, the modern Airport city gives back more to the original city of its context than the original city gives back to its natural environmental context. Of course, the Airport pollutes like crazy and consumes like crazy, draining natural capital from the natural environment right through the city of its context. But as a paradigm, the Airport City within a City is a fascinating model for how a massive mechanistic and industrial system can be within a "natural" and symbiotic relationship to its mechanistic and industrial urban context.

In this sense, the Airport City within a City is an ironic paradigm of contradictions. The Airport City within a City is a model of postmodernity (industrial and mechanistic functions, forms, flows) and sustainability (interrelationships, context responsiveness, and a system of sustenance). The Airport City within a City is continued, infinite growth and limited, contained space; speed and globalization and locally-based rhythms; draining resource consumption and contextual recognition and responsiveness; and respect for the needs and wants of the passenger's human scale and the industry's global scale. I'd say this mix makes the City within a City a critical paradigm of our twenty-first century global-local human lifestyle.

Noise produced by airflight, for example, becomes what I'll call a "context impact", which is (by the way) one of the impacts considered by Environmental Impact Reports under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). (Within CEQA there are also special guidelines for development within airport plans.) These "context impacts" are the most perceived impacts between the Airport City within a City and the Airport's context city (as can be observed with Amsterdam as Schiphol Airport's context city). They build sociological and environmental relationships which, in a modern perspective of environmental analysis, means impacts to quality of life and environment that are calculateable by contingent valuation, evaluateable by cost benefit analysis, and are mitigateable by use of measures that dampen the problem. Interestingly, the "context impacts" of the Airport, while being therefore within the realms of economics, equity, and ecology (which by the way, make the tri-fold framework of "cradle-to-cradle" analysis professed by William McDonough and Michael Braungart), impact most directly the city's human quality of life issues. And even more interestingly, the “context impacts” monitored by airports are basically limited to noise (the sound of jets in the air), safety concerns (such as crashes and need for emergency landing space), overflight (flight patterns and visibility), and airspace protection (potential hazards to flight such as tall builds and areas where birds may collect); all impacts that are initially more perceptual than tangible in the same way as a visual image. (See California Airport Landuse Planning Handbook, pp summary-8) In short, City within a City context impacts are from man-made to the made-made. City context impacts are more from the man-made to the environmental.

McDonough and Braungart's "cradle-to-cradle" methodology (the most level-headed and progressive "eco-effective" model for design) recommends designing systems, products, processes that treat waste as food in the interconnected arenas of economics, equity, and ecology. Technically speaking, this can be quite complex. The rubber within a shoe sole contains countless different chemicals and to break it down, and to remove the harmful ones, and produce a shoe (as Nike is prototyping) whose rubber is actually beneficial to the environment, is quite complex. On a larger urban planning scale, McDonough's "Huangbaiyu Cradle to Cradle Village Master Plan" in Benxi, Liaoning Province, China, will attempt to implement the cradle-to-cradle concept for a new, developing community.

But to jump back to existing urban centers, and look at the Airport City within a City, we already have a cradle-to-cradle "closed-loop" system (although horribly dirty) in place: the Airport City in relationship to its context city. The Airport, looped into a vital give-and-take relationship to the context city, is then the principle place for revitalizing the city and transforming existing cities into having healthier relationships with their context (host?) cities. From within the City, the Airport City within a City can guide healthier environmental relationship from its existing web of contextual recognition and responsiveness. The Airport, the City within a City. is the gateway to transforming the global-local lifestyle, just as it was the product of modernity that transformed the city of today into what it is.

Natural Air - Port Cities

Foster and Partner’s new Philology Library, at the Free University in Berlin, helps to create an interior reading environment that emulates the sense of the ambient environment for reading outside—one can sense the clouds moving above—but the environment is not virtual, it is rather reflective of the environment’s conditions and responsive to them. Behling, Foster’s sustainability leader, “compares it to sitting with a white umbrella under a tree and watching leaves cast shadows to create a beautiful play of light and pattern”. Ironically this makes me think of interior thematized environments that have been constructed to simulate elsewhere or external localities and their ambient effects... such as the interior external environments in Las Vegas' Venetian, Paris, New York New York, and Caesars' Palace hotels... and Disneyland and World, too. Yet it is part of the architect’s job to satisfy needs and wants, including those of a satisfying experience felt while mingling with nature's elements.

As I sat outside today in front of the Science Library going through my notes for my research, I was greatly enjoying the blinding sunlight coming across the red brick tiles, and the heat of the rays, and the light breeze, and the sway of the shadows through the trees, and the light sounds of chatter and leaves and birds—all that ambient stuff. Is it wrong for architecture to replicate feelings of these things, whether intentionally simulated, or in their distilled essence?

The other day during Political Economy and the Environment class I appreciated the benefit of biomimicry. Water, the subject of our current discussion, is really an amazing thing; useful in both a biological and metaphorical capacity. Professor Haddad talked about how plants are able to use water. Because of the way water molecules are designed, the plants can then suck them up through their roots, and the water flows upward! This is amazing. Water treatment plants, by the way, use a distilled and strengthended natural process: they do the same things as wetlands, but process and clean the water at just a faster rate. So if we look at nature and its processes, designs, systems, we can find some useful ideas on how to solve design problems of our own.

So, Foster and Partners’ library uses some ideas of biomimicry in both its aesthetic and technical design—“green”-wise, it apparently is a product from years of research, as well—to create an experience that is satisfying and healthy.

Anyway, back to airports. If airports are interior spaces (aside from the post-modern connotation, “interior” really doesn’t say much just yet) that people pass through like external environments (they contain destinations and gates inside of them that are connected by routes) like streets, alleys, paths of any sort, then it would make sense for airport spaces to reflect things people like in satisfying and healthy external environments.

But since airports are not simply external environment passage spaces (spaces, for the most part, used strictly for the movement of people or goods), they are more like external environment places of destination that can contain passages and destinations, gates, inside of them: like parks, piazzas, malls, forests, and a city’s downtown district, to name a few.

So an airport is similar to a park, piazza, or downtown because it is relatively “public” and used to connect people to other places but also is a destination in its self. Although, unlike a park, piazza, or downtown, people generally do not go to airports specifically to relax or enjoy oneself. In that sense, then, airports are more like malls because their purpose is more functionally rooted in facilitating a type of commercial transaction. But then again, many people go to malls to just hang-out… but maybe that’s because the mall has replaced the park, piazza, or downtown in postmodern life…

But rather than trying to draw analogies with other types of spaces to the airport, I think an airport is rather something quite unique. Airports have “airport-ness”; that’s what 1950s architecture critic G.E. Kidder-Smith said in his book The New Architecture of Europe (pp 170, Gordon). But I have to content I think his “airport-ness” was supposed to reflect a different ideal, one rather obsessively modern, functional, pure, sleek, fast, and all that 20th century Industrial-Age fashion. But at the same time, his eye was right about the meaning of the airport: that its heart and soul, purpose and life, was totally different from any space, environment, facility, ever before. An architecture of airports wasn’t meant to have neo-classical columns or Spanish architectural flair of the regional ilk; airports were doing their own thing, and their bodies were meant to reflect the growing muscles and bones inside of them.

So, if airports aren’t really anything but airports, like a seaport isn’t really anything but a seaport, then how does it still function and feel like an external environment of sorts? Maybe that’s because, also like a seaport, you can place all kinds of non-seaport stuff inside of a seaport and extend it way beyond a simple seaport… like the way Barcelona’s waterfront is so many amazing things, from restaurants, to museums, to exhibition space, to beaches, to clubs, to apartments, to promenades, to road- and transit-ways, and also that thing called a harbor.

Then maybe an airport is an airport and nothing else, but it grows like an external environment (and people move through it like one), and can be developed like a seaport. That would make the airport strikingly close to a real city, especially given the fact that airports have hotels, businesses, insanely consumptive infrastructure systems, and all the other living, modern city components… some airports even market themselves like cities, a destination for tourists in themselves…

The Frankfurt Airport City in Germany is like that. There are over 500 companies employing over 65,000 people at the Frankfurt Airport City. The “City” gets over 50 million international passengers a year. The city’s website also boasts that the its location in Germany makes it a good place to shop and sell because there are “35 million well-heeled consumers [living] within a catchment area extending 200 km from the airport in all directions — that is equivalent to about 43 percent of Germany's population”.

But, wait, did you catch that? Frankfurt Airport City, because of its geographic location (“heart” of Europe, they tell the traveler), is also a city because of the cities around it. The cities around the airport city feed off of the airport, and the airport city feeds off of them; a symbiotic relationship between “real” cities (note the plural) and “airport city” (note the singular).

But an airport city can be “real”, it’s not fake, it just looks a little different and people use it a bit differently. So maybe the question of what an airport is—what type of environment it is—is a question of how real is a landscape, or nature, or any kind of pure ideal that can be doctored and regrown, manicured and planted, or left alone to “organically” become old, wizen, haggard, diverse, multifaceted, and “natural”?

New Views

Architecture gives people new views that could not have been attained without the built structure. My apartment room window looking out into the trees could only have been imagined by the architect before having been created by the building or some other structure that augmented the human view by relocating the body in space (such as a very high ladder).

Cars, mobile vehicles, even bicycles, give also a new view of perspective on the landscape that is unattainable without them. Airplanes also give a new view, but theirs’ is particular. Objects totally detached from the Earth’s topography, airplanes have a very different continuity to ground-based perspectives.

Looking out of an airplane window, one’s body position has no real fluid continuity to the contextual topography of its surrounding landscape. Looking out of my apartment window into the campus forest feels normal, natural, and the fact this view could not have been seen before does not immediately strike anyone—there is a fluid sense of mobile continuity between the new view position and the surrounding landscape, that of which is part of the view. View and viewer-location share a common context. Airplanes dislocate this, taking the body and the view to unattainable heights.

The closest ground-rooted experience to this airplane dislocation in physical architecture is the skyscraper. Looking out into the city from high above, the view’s vertical projection and height above the Earth’s topography surpasses the immediate sense of contextual normality for the body; but still continuity is reached: the building is touching the ground, fluid movement between the skyscraper office high above on the 365th floor and the ground can take place, and the city seen within the view shares a lasting contextual relationship to the skyscraper’s space. A grander example of the tree-top view I see from my apartment window.

Coordinate(d) Airspace

The idea of COORDINATES is really fascinating me for our research project on international airports. in the airport history book I’ve read, “Naked Airport”, there is talk about how postmodern architecture of airports attempted to resettle the "older coordinates" that had been disrupted by the post-war decentralized airport structures.

What precisely were the old coordinates? flat Cartesian space? the broad expanses of land and openness Le Corbusier saw as seminal in his 'naked airport' concept, a vision seen from the plane to the port yet aligned in elevation not plan?

The coordinate(d) space of the old was aligned primarily from the view upon land as seen in elevation, but with aircraft and the repositioning of the body into the craft's own air-space, the new view upon the land became aligned from above, as if in plan not elevation. What did this do to cartographic and 2D projections of space, to notions of perspective, to the whole concept of the 3rd dimension as depicted through non-3D measures (i.e. image based representation instead of literal, physical architecture)?

Did the coordinates of visually represented space, as known in the post-renaissance world, become realigned upon a new axis? Is there a new evolution of visual representation--the next step after Brunelleschi's discovery of perspective--underway? Must humans now grapple with a new sense of space as projected from another kind of 'perspective'? Does this perspective also manipulate the convention of the 3rd dimension of depth, and of time that can move within it's limits and bounds? And is this process of experiencing this difference experienced in the dislocation of the "older" coordinates...

I'd say yes. And that in fact, cinema and the visually projected cinematic narrative are in part manifestations of this newly coordinate(d) space. Cinema in particular relocates the human experiencer to position of 'viewer' upon the cinematic landscape. The coordinates of perspectival space become re-projected in motion before the eyes; depth is not only seen in the 2D but read in the image's oneiric immersion. A new space--cinematic spatial coordinates--wrap around the 'viewer', a viewer's perspectival position is relocated into the cinematic space while their body remains sedentary, stable, motionless. Motion of the cinematic order--images of a physically far away world passing by--slide the coordinates of the new across the coordinates of the old; interstices dislocate the body to new planes of perception, position, and place.

AIRSPACE - viewer-ship; dislocation in between the places and times; realigned orientation to Earth-bound perspective; priority of plan where before we saw elevation and section; priority of elevation and section where before we imagined plan; a new coordination of coordinates inside context, place, experience.

Coordinates themselves also function as the limiting figures connecting vectors into shapes, diagrams, maps, and particular spaces. Coordinates are a mapping and form-making tool. Coordinates can be applied to any surface to make it manipulatable. In 3D computer graphics technology, a sphere can be coated in a matrix of points for extrusion, etc. Surfaces simply become transformable into the third dimension with coordinates. The flat image can now exist in the 3rd dimension with coordinate mapping; an act not simply of perception but technological manipulation.

Edges of coordinate space may define the plausible limits to its own spatial existence, and can infer further spaces beyond the visible. The negotiated boundaries of Nations are coordinated to align to regulatory coordinates. Space above the surface of the Earth, extending into the air, is also regulated by coordinate domains. Movement across, between, inside all coordinated space is defined by the whereabouts of the object within the coordinate structure and its position relative to the absolute position of the regulatory coordinates. Airflight is in its very nature subjected to physically coordinate(d) space, as noted by David Pascoe in his introductory “Airspace” musings on regulation air spaces.

The beauty of coordinate(d) airspace is that it is assumed to be Cartesian in all dimensions: the ultimate mobile utopian freedom.

Movement can plausibly transpose things at any level or orientation. “Air”-space prioritizes air’s substance, its imperceptible materiality. We can feel wind in our hair and the smell of a sea breeze, or sense lack of oxygen but in representation air only takes form through the characterizations of its edges and limiting factors. Coordinates become opportunities for defining materiality to the space in-between the matrix’s points. Renaissance Raffaello and Botticelli understood this. Raffaello added corporeality to space and imbued it’s essence; he would emphasize color around the air, began to manipulate the perspectival depth, and characterized movement and light passing through what is empty by touching what is around the emptiness. (See Raffaello’s “Madonna of Foligno”) Botticelli, master of the line, drew each figure in concrete shapes by the out-line, the painting’s spatial divisions coordinated by the line’s positioning. (See Botticelli’s “The Annunciation”) Spaces of air or non materiality were made just as relevant to the eye as the substances of material bodies. Voids were materialized by clarifying the limits to it; coordinating its relations, giving the space—the air—substance.

Firenze & 60th anniversary of UNESCO & the 57th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights

Firenze, Italia:

For the 60th anniversary of UNESCO & the 57th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights

Giornata di studio sul tema

"Il Diritto a conoscere il patrimonio culturale"

7 Decembre 2005, Firenze,
Palazzo Vecchio, Sala de' Dugento

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Il Sindaco di Firenze e il Presidente dell'Centro UNESCO di Firenze hanno il piacere di invitarLa alla celebrazione del 60º Anniversario della creazione dell'UNESCO e del 57º Anniversario della Dichiarazione universale dei Diritte Umani

Il 7 Dicembre, in Palazzo Vecchio
"Il Diritto a conoscere il patrimonio culturale"

Mattina:
Ore 9,30, Sala de' Dugento

Programma:
Saluti: Leonardo Domenici, Sindaco di Firenze

Marialuisa Stringa, Presidente Centro UNESCO di Firenze

Giovanni Puglisi, Presidente della Commissione Italiana UNESCO

Interverranno:
Simone Siliani, Assessore alla Cultura Comune di Firenze
Adele Cesi, Architetto Ufficio Lista Patrimonio Mondiale UNESCO, Ministero per Beni e le Attività Culturali
"Conoscere i siti italiani del patrimonio mondiale"

Rosa Maria Di Giorgi, CNR Coordinatrice della Rete Telematica Regione Toscana
"Le nuove tecnologie per la conoscenza del patrimonio culturale"

Giovanni Robbiano, docente Università di Genova e IULM
"Il cinema: una via per conoscere il patrimonio"

Ore 11,30
Attribuzione del premio del Centro UNESCO di Firenze per la comprensione internazionale a
Sergio Zavoli

e ai giovani "ambasciatori di pace"
Saluto del coro del Centro UNESCO di Firenze e del Liceo Machiavelli Capponi

Pomeriggio:
Ore 15,30, Sala de' Dugento

Moderatore: Carlo Francini, Responsabile Ufficio Centro Storico Patrimonio Mondiale UNESCO

Interverranno:
Giorgio Luti, Professore emerito dell'Università di Firenze
"Conoscere il patrimonio letterario"

Marialuisa Stringa, già docente nell'Università di Lecce
"Tradurre, perché? L'impegno dell'UNESCO"

Ernestina Pellegrini, docente Università di Firenze
"Trapianti: riflessioni sull'importanza delle traduzioni"

Un esempio di traduzione:
Plinio Perilli, direttore di collana editoriale
introduce la prima antologia poetica italiana della poetessa americana Djuna Barnes

Discanto, Roma, Ianua Editrice, 2005
a cura e traduzione di Maura Del Serra

Lettura di pagine a cura dell'attrice Monica Menchi.

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Questo progetto cominciava per...

"Progetto Fiorenza"

La giornata di studio é prevista nel quadro del programma organizzato dal Centro UNESCO di Firenze in collaborazione con l'Ufficio Centro storico Patrimonio Mondiale UNESCO dell'Assessorato alla Cultura del Comune di Firenze e si articolerà nella seguenti iniziative:

• un Corso di Formazione,
• un Concorso per elaborazione di una sceneggiatura,
• Costruzione di una bibliografia sui tema

L'iniziativa é volta a difendere i tesori inestimabili del patrimonio dell'arte, della natura, della cultura, sensibilizzando i giovani in particolare, ma anche i cittadini tutti. Sfondo e protagonista del lavoro che si propone dovrá essere la cittá di Firenze, ritratta in tutti i suoi aspetti, diffondendone il messaggio universale che Firenze patrimonio dell'umanità sa trasmettere al mondo.


Calendario Incontri

Il corso proseguirà nelle date sotto indicate presso la Syracuse University, Piazza Savonarola, Firenze, dalle 16,00 alle 18,00

Gennaio 19: "il Patrimonio Mondiale UNESCO attraverso il piano di gestione di Firenze"

Febbraio 2: "Comunicare il patrimonio attraverso l'immagine"

(Diviso in due sessioni):
"Alla scoperta del centro storico di Firenze"
Febbraio 16, Prima Sessione

Marzo 2, Seconda Sessione

Maggio in data da stabilire


Lavoro per gli Studenti

Elaborazione di una sceneggiatura dal titolo: "Scrivi una storia di finzione che ti piacerebbe veder realizzata sul grande schermo, che abbia come sfondo e ambientazione Firenze e il suo patrimonio."

Costruzione di una bibliografia sul tema a cura dei giovani, di ogni ordine di scuole e studenti universitari, che sarà inserita nel data base "Progetto Fiorenza" e nei data base del Centro UNESCO di Firenze e del Comune di Firenze.

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Per maggiori informazioni/ For more information:

Segreteria Generale,
Gerardo Gallace
tel: 055/6810895

Coordinatrice,
Dott.ssa Silvia Intini
cell: 347/5830285
silviaintini@yahoo.it

Presidente
Centro UNESCO di Firenze,
Dott.ssa Marialuisa Stringa
tel: 055/572676
fax: 055/583454
centrounescofi@iol.it

(information may be subject to change and rights belong to UNESCO Firenze, Comune di Firenze, UNESCO)

Prospettiva dal cielo

Oggi ho fatto una linea di molti cose io dovero’ fare alla prima ritornero’ negli Stati Uniti… andro’ molto piu’ chiese e musei; studiaro’ piazze, palazzi, strade, viste, arte e architettura; e leggero’ molto piu’ storia di Firenze, Toscana, Italia; mangiero’ molti cose da mangiare tipi dal’Italia; ero’ molto italiano!… Ci sono molti cose fare!

Firenze e molto interessante, e’ mi faro’ volere vedere tutti! Io amo qui molto! Adesso, mentre facevo il mio compiti per italiano e guardavo la luce—a fuori la mia finestra c’e’ il lampo—e pioggia faceva la passeggiata gui’ la vetrata, io pensevo di il mio tempo a qui. Molto volte, molto bene volte; uno tempo come la distanza infinita della cielo.

Mi piache’ molto il cielo di Firenze. Ma, il cielo? Perche lo spazio fra i palazzi e il cielo e’ una volume specifica con la geometria su la geometria dalla citta’ facevo in totale un spazio concrete e con dividere dalla prospettiva. Sono la prima persona ho visto questo? …e’ molto, molto interessante… ambiente e geometra hanno messo insieme.

Che cose il cielo? Tuttigiorno, se le nuvole come pane fresca ha aperto a mezzo, o se la sole e’ andata con grande fuochi, o se la luna da solo come la cuore, o—come adesso—il lampo ha fatto la luce per qualcuna leggevano; il cielo sempre toccava la citta’ fra la collina e la collina. Il cielo e’ uno solido volume; il cielo fa lo spazio geometria come prospettiva dalla citta’ di Firenze.

In facto, oggi, sono andato galleria Uffizi ancorra. Io ho seduto a davanti un lavoro di Sandro Botticelli per lungo tempo. Con linea, Botticelli e’ diventato maestro di pittura. Il suo pittura con Annunziata e molto importante. Mi piache’ questa pittura molto. Il suoi altri lovoro anche molto importante, ma voglio dire questo pitture perche ha geometria dalla prospettiva come architettura—il chiave per lo spazio e l’umanita a dentro e’.

Questo tutti posti a dentro Firenze. Il chiave per vita dalla Rennaissance di Firenze: Italia hanno fatto scoperta per disegnare lo spazio come tuttigiorno vita.

Allora, pittura Annunziata di Botticelli potera’ dividere in pezzi equale con assi longitudine e latitudine. Questi pezzi potera’ dividere in piu piccolo pezzi per costruiva uno immagino equilibrata. Prospettiva in Firenze e non nuovo ma questo e solo uno esempo. la Rennaissance ha fatto la prospettiva sempre molto importante. Prospettiva, in uso dal 1425, ha fatto la possibilita’ di controllare razionalmente lo spazio in disegnare e realta’. Anche, lo spazio in prospettiva fa lo spazio totale e olistico.

Prospettiva: geometria ha dividuto definire lo spazio tra.

Ma Annunziata di Botticelli e piccolo esempio in confronto di altro esempo. Ma, prima, se tu sei in galleria Uffizi, e ha visto Botticelli, poi andrai a fuori la galleria. Quando tu andrai a fuori galleria Uffizi, e poi entrero’ un spazio di Giorgio Vasari a centrale della lungo galleria, e poi andrai a dietro questo spazio, vedero’ una prospettiva come una geometria. Galleria Uffizi, e poi Palazzo Vecchio, e poi piazza della Signoria, e poi molti palazzi, e poi una cupola dal Duomo di Brunelleschi… tutti importante per prospettiva.

Uno dopo ancorra, spazio strati su spazio. Questo strati possano essere rompere con geometria per prospettiva con dividere. E poi che cose noi abbiamo con questo? Lo spazio ha fatto con prospettiva per linea di vista come la prostettiva ha usato per disegnavo architettura—noi sensiamo lo spazio come loro hanno disegnato per l’umanita.

Anche, e questo molto importante per ricordare, piazza della Signoria molto importante per prospettiva… come tanto in Firenze… come quello cupola dal Duomo di Brunelleschi! Entrambi usanno geometria perfecto per faceva lo spazio fra i palazzi e le piazze. Entrambi anche possono essere disegnera con prospettiva. In facto, Brunelleschi molto importante per prospettiva. E poi, c’e’ anche la pittura di Trinita’ di masaccio in Santa Maria Novella quest’e’ una delle prime di prospettiva: una pittura con architettura di profondita’ dentro il muro.

Come il cielo su Firenze, a dentro la citta’, prospettiva molto importante e ha fatto questo posto, e poi tutto dal mondo… il mondo olistico dalla prospettiva.

The Magic Fountain

On being alone and importance of Place

Sometimes one must go into the depths of one’s self to come back out again refreshed.

Since writing and posting the entry “a dark room with no walls”, I’ve had time to reflect and consider my words, thoughts, experience, and the world they fit into. I must admit, that entry was very personal, and some may consider it too personal for this space; but I’ll contest that as part of my “wayfinding” journey it has been quite helpful.

In reflection, I was writing mostly about the feeling of loneliness and my personal acceptances of it—or rather, my process of becoming comfortable with being an individual in a very big world. It happened for me while I was at the Magic Fountain in Barcelona, surrounded by people I didn’t know. I realized in that moment that I was entirely alone, but surrounded by so many people. And it was this irony of being one amongst others that struck me. The experience freed me from anxieties about alienation and loneliness and brought me further into the world.

While I was no longer scared of being alone, the recognition of my self as an equal self among the immense and vast number of selves in the world (each respectively as individual and particular as my own), led me to separate my self from my thoughts of others. While I sat on the steps of Montjuic and watched the changing lights and water dance to classical music, I thought: “you’re here by yourself, enjoy this great moment, and stop feeling sorry that others can’t experience this! Take no photos! Take a look around, you’re actually alone!” But when I looked around I found that I was alone but surrounded by people. I was alone, but then again, in that Place, I was not really alone.

I believe the sense of comfort from being alone—that transformation of “loneliness” to “comfort” that I experienced in my last night in Barcelona—was actually due to the Place I was at. I was alone but surrounded by many unknown people. And the Place became the “transistor” of human support.

In that moment I knew I no longer needed to worry about becoming alone because I realized that no matter where I am in the world I am not alone. I am separate as an individual but will always be surrounded by people. (To put it bluntly, we all live on the same planet.) And it was a successful Place—for me, the Magic Fountain in Barcelona—that was the “transistor” (the transferring medium of humanness) that connected me to the unknown people I was surrounded by. I no longer needed to worry about alienation and loneliness, about wishing friends and family back home could experience this with me. I no longer needed to comfort myself with these thoughts because the Place set me in rhythm with my human environs.

In further reflection, when I walked away from the Magic Fountain in Barcelona, I not only walked away with a revised sense of independence, but also a little bit of cynicism. I walked away without a fear of being alone. But I also walked away thinking I didn’t need to care about what anybody though about me, or anything. “Whatever, ‘bo’”, I thought to myself. I was alone and therefore so was everybody else... so who cares...

Coming into comfort with being physically alone is a two-way street. One can find comfort in themselves within a big world. One can also find one’s being alone to mean there actually is no responsibility between oneself and that big world.

And the later is which I feel—in combination with places in communities that don't act as “transistors” of humanness—breeds alienation, loneliness, and cynicism in many of today’s Western Youth.

I came away from my experience at the Magic Fountain experiencing both independence and cynicism. And in considering my last major blog entry, they both reflect. But it is important to move beyond the cynicism and acknowledge the places we live in and experience, their powers to change us, and the nature of human relationships that are formed through places.

What I had felt and called “loneliness” became the emotion of “comfort” because it was in my state of being alone that I found comfort. And it was the Place around me that took the form of, like what one uses the architecture of a church and temple for, connection, freedom, sustenance, and evolution of the human spirit.

. . .
Apathy and America

One of the benefits of studying abroad with Syracuse University in Florence (and there are many) is being able to meet students from many different American universities. Studying abroad here is like having graduated, gone to a new school, a new life, and getting a chance to see what life is like for many different people. I’ve met many amazing people from all around the world, and many with views that have challenged me.

Two months ago I had a conversation with two students who had a very different view of the world than I. To them, in order to have “people at the top” there must always be “people at the bottom”. They told me that children must always be dying, people must always be starving, and wars must happen in order to allow other people to have success, great lives, and be happy.

I’m stubbornly optimistic and utopian, so to hear such a (in my opinion) pessimistic, cynical outlook really bothered me. I held my breath, swallowed, and asked them to tell me more about their perspectives. “That’s just the way it is”, they told me. “You can’t change the world, and why would you want to? People must always suffer for others to be successful.”

“But that’s not true,” I responded. “Why can’t we strive to help everybody in the world to feel happy and good about themselves, their communities, and their lives?”

While working as Primary Contact Student Representative on the UCSC 2005 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) Committee, I encountered a wide variety of views on the future of UCSC, Santa Cruz, community, environment, place, people, life, and the world; many contrasting, many diverse, and all very interesting. My approach as student representative was to always bring the diverse opinions into dialogue.

But, if there was any view that bothered me, it was apathy. Like a pimple that just won’t go away, it is bothersome. A view that the world, the future, everything, is “just the way it is” and that it is “pointless” to even consider trying to change things.

I must admit, the sense of being alone without connection to others experienced in-part at the Magic Fountain reminds me of this American apathy... the idea that as independent, one has no connection to others and the world.

(An aside: At UC Santa Cruz, I encountered apathy sometimes when trying to discuss the importance of understanding that things, people, systems, places, the University of California as a matter of fact, all take a long time to change. And that one must respect time and plan with the long-view... that the long-range part of the Long Range Development Plan is really important… that real change does not happen over-night… that real change is a process involving many complex factors.

Apathy is also a very real problem within the University of California system among a fair amount of students, especially whites and middle to upper classes. See the University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey and SERU21 Project for more information. Both these projects were presented at the UC symposium on "Civic and Academic Engagement in the Multiversity", of which I participated, in June 2005.)

. . .
Global Guide

Americans (including myself) have an interesting relationship to this whole “apathy” and “cynicism” thing.

Time and time again, here in Italia, I am struck by the commonness and causualness of American pop music, brands, sports, technology, food, etc. within the marketplace and consciousness.

While riding the Eurostar down to Rome last weekend I happened to sit next to a very nice Italian man, a professor and an activist with WWF. We conversed in Italian about many issues, sustainability, the environment, globalization, national parks in Italia (in particular an amazing park in Sardegna, outside Cagliari), Italian cities, differences and similarities between the USA and Italia, and popular culture.

He said that many Italian youth prefer to listen to their pop-music, prefer to just go out and have fun… bob their heads to the beats and go, “bo.” I had in my lap my little portable radio; he smiled and pointed to it—“you, too?” No, I use the radio to listen to Italian music, to try and pick up as much Italian language and culture as I can. Not an ipod, “a portable radio!”, I joked.

I asked him about the predominance of American and English-language pop music on the radio. To me it all seems so strange to hear so much of it when sifting through radio stations. In the USA, aside from the Spanish-language radio stations—which are a minority compared to the rest—everything is in English. It is difficult to imagine what it would be like to be Italian, think and know Italian, but to hear so much pop music in a foreign language. My new friend said it’s always been that way: for him it was the Beatles.

America and the English-language produces the most played-out, globalized, popular culture. And this is just the surface, but a surface people like to look at. While the global relations between nations are shifting, America is still a source of guidance to other countries.

This past week I attended a lecture on the trans-Altantic relationship of the USA and EU Nations. History Professor Federico Romero of the University of Florence noted that while anti-American sentiment is extremely high (especially in Western European nations), EU nations politically, economically, and strategically still look towards the United States for advice and as an example to follow. Generalizations (though rooted in real actions) such as: Americans are “war-mongers”, “fabricated the war-on-terror to take control of oil and power”, “are egotistical”, “are anti-Islamic”, “don’t give a rat’s ass about Europe”, can still be followed with, “...well, USA is still very, very powerful, so we need to look towards them for guidance.”

And that’s the reality. Despite changing global relations and the stupid things the current American government says and does, the USA is still very powerful and influential. Europe looks to the USA for advice, and so does China, and India, and many other nations... why? Because people in China say "I want music, cars, and houses like those Americans". And China is trying to satisfy those desires, trying to give its population what Americans have had.

(An aside: China's interests have repercussions economically around the world. Currently Africa is being hit very badly, but soon it is likely to be Europe. This has to do with local/national industries not being able to compete with the cheapness of Chinese products that are produced with such a small labor cost.)

. . .

With many Youth growing-up and choosing their recognition of independence in the world to mean a disconnection from others and the world (via apathy and cynicism), America needs to recognize its own Place and set an example.

And with nations looking towards the USA for guidance on how to live, Americans should share with the world places, people, policy, products, and ideas that help people gain independence, and an understanding of our global togetherness.

Like my personal experience at the Magic Fountain in Barcelona, we are all alone--all individuals--yet all sitting together, on Earth.

Neve adesso!

It's lightly snowing in Firenze right now! :) I am very happy.

A dark room with no walls

[Edited, Nov. 24, 2005; please note addition]

Now, though, I'm sitting in the computer lab. Next to me is a girl writing a paper and talking to her friends back home on AIM. I used to use AIM but haven't in three years. Sitting here is stressful; the connection is so slow. I swear to God you can feel stress in rooms. The tension in here builds up in my back muscles and my neck. My legs are shaking in axiousness so much that it makes me feel like I have to take a shit.

There is wireless, but I'm stubborn and haven't connected my laptop. I don't really want to have wireless. I want to stay away from here. I need fresh air, it's stuffy in here.

Ligh's fade to black. silence. It's cold. I can see my breath. The room is dark and I'm alone. I'm writing in the dark again.

I write: "Da solo? Da solo, ancora?"
A voice responds: "Si, ancora. Tu sei pazzo, si?"
I respond: "No, sono non pazzo."
I write in response: "Sei molto strano, pazzo moltissimo."
"Da solo? No, no voglio essere pazzo."
"Si devi essere pazzo -- sempre."

Molto triste. Camera pans from a close-up from under my chin and tracks back to a long shot of me sitting, lit by the blue hum of my laptop screen, alone in darkness.

"Aiuto! Aiuto! Aiuto!" I scream! Suddenly the darkness falls down: The dark room's walls fall down, clouds of dust rise, and I'm sitting in a misty Tuscan field with a few sheep. The dew-wet grass smells of grass; a light wind rolls over it, rippling it in green waves. I can see far in the distance more grass, more hills, more mist, more, more, more, more, more, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta...

My mind is like a road that keeps going on forever. My thoughts keep coming like the world that keeps turning. I'm having trouble catching up with my feet. No worries, I'll just walk along, right? Maybe I'll see someone I know along the way.

Sometimes I look out in the distance, far away into the distant land that I see from that countryside road. I see buildings, apartment complexes, forests, trees, mountains, hills, birds, fields, cities, and more distance. There is a lot of trash by the side of the road mixed in with overgrown weeds. I contemplate picking some of it up or inspecting it, but there is too much of it.

Sometimes when I walk by myself I say things like "life's not really worth living". I'll then say "and what if I wrote that in my blog?" I think in response, "I'd like that; sounds like a kinda' crazy thing to say ...but what would people think? They'll think I'm crazy?!" Oh well, as Italians say, "bo".

[But you know, "bo" is the wrong answer. In my Italian Cinema class we recently watched "Cento Passi" (100 Steps). Cento Passi is about Peppino Impastato, the young man of a small Mafia-run town in Sicily who becomes a leader of youth to speak out against the Mafia and the ways they have been destructive to the city's environment, social freedoms, and politics. Peppino was also born within a Mafia family. Cento Passi is a true story.

After Peppino's father is murdered, Peppino discovers that his father kept all of Peppino's belongings: his Communist articles, his papers, his notes. One of the notes says that he no-longer has the will to live and wants to give up life and politics. Peppino waves this note in his younger brother's face and says he had written it a couple years before... only a random note he rationalized, a non-important emotional outcry of the past. After Peppino is tragically tortured and murdered, after his friends cry in agony and pain, the police find that same piece of paper and use it as evidence to say that Peppino committed suicide, that Peppino--the young man who critically spoke out against the problems within his local community--had problems and decided to silence himself.

"Bo" is the wrong answer. "Bo" means in Italian a combination of "I don't know/whatever" and is to wave life under-the-bridge, to say I can scream and cry now and that the what happens in the future isn't important. Peppino didn't commit suicide, he was murdered. But his ego in the past was used against him at his death.

I have felt lonely abroad, I have been learning how to find comfort and happiness as a human being, and make mistakes. Sometimes when I walk down that countryside road I say things... but sometimes, when we walk down those roads, it is important to look at where we are, look at the big picture and see the other people walking down that same road. It can be important to stop walking and reflect. Important to recognize that life is worth living, that what we say or do one day has consequences for ourselves, our communities, and our world. And that "bo" simply doesn't cut-it.]

In Barcelona, on my last night there, I went and watched the Magic Fountain at the bottom of Montjuic. I love fountains, especially musical ones that dance and change lights using their original art-deco pipes and decorations. I was entirely alone but surrounded by many people. It was hillarious, all of a sudden I then realized that I've always been alone. And I love it, especially when surrounded by tons of people I don't know. I gave a light chuckle under my breath and smiled. I walked over to the Caixaforum museum and went to a free classical music concert. It was blissful to listen to the cacophony of all the instruments playing, tuning, warming up, at the same time. Ah, so many memories! I was a 'band nerd' from elementary school to my senior year in high school. I heard this every single day. And then the first clarinet tuned. Beautiful!

I haven't composed any music since the UCSC Long Range Development Plan project began and consumed a lot of my time and passion. Composing music is a major passion of mine, and I haven't composed any music in 2 years! The symphonic band was wonderful, and the conductor so proud! I was also attracted to the show by the fact there was video projected in the theater that changed based on the music. The summer after my freshman year of college I participated in an amazing music festival in Santa Cruz. My music piece had a gloomy and scary looking tree dance to my strange song. It was a great moment for me.

That night I found myself comfortable sleeping on my left side. I always felt uncomfortable sleeping that way before, like it scared me.

At the beginning of my trip to Spain, at the train station in Pisa, there was a group of American girls and a couple American guys. I was really shy and scared to introduce myself. They all seemed so smooth. They asked each other, "where you from..." Simple stuff. I choked on my spit and bit my lip. I told myself "I can't be so damn shy, this won't work!" I kept wondering how I looked to everyone. Kept peering out from the periphery of my vision like a spy.

By the end of my trip in Spain the emotion of "loneliness" had entirely transformed into the emotion of "comfort". I relish every moment alone, breath it in with desire and glamour. Dance with myself like a fool in love with his shadow. Travelling alone was one of the best things I have ever done. Unfortunately this description doesn't say anything about the process that led to the change in me. That's another story that's worth telling.

In the elevator going up to my hostal in Barcelona, there were two huge guys from Poland. They thought me being from California to be laughable, "so far away" they said. Yeah, I guess so. But for me Poland seems really far away, even when in Spain or Italy. Memory is situated in places and geographics. My head is starting to become rooted in Italy... and I've only three weeks left before going back to the 'states'!

This weekend I went to Roma. In Firenze, I feel like it has dropped at least ten degrees since when I left for Roma and then returned. Outside, for Natale, the city has strung up lights in the streets and piazzas like lace. It is really freezing outside. I see my breath when I breath; I blow hot breathe in the cold air like smoke-rings.

In Roma I walked by the Ferrari store. I almost walked right past it but caught myself and walked in. The display I saw outside had a cut portion of a Ferrari hood, heavily waxed, standing-in as the frontis-piece for a display of Ferrari logo-adorned products. Inside you could buy a Ferrari vest, a Ferrari hat, a Ferrari shirt, a Ferrari mug, Ferrari Puma shoes, photos of Ferrari Formula-1 race cars, a Ferrari digital camera, even a Ferrari laptop. None of the things in the store had anything to do with a Ferrari car. Playing in the background was really smooth, beat-ladden music. The type of thing you'd play in the car to feel like James Bond driving fast. I asked myself, "Why do people find cars sexy?" I've lost my appetite for the car's aesthetics. I used to get googly-eyed at cars. When a young boy I had a yellow Lamborghini model and my brother a red Ferrari model. You could open the doors and the engine hood. I can't seem to bring myself back into seeing cars the way young boys still see them: reminiscent of a barely naked woman in a red skin-tight bikini. "Damn!" It's a shame, I guess; but all I see now is a metal case bent into a shape to contain bodies and an engine that shits fumes and rainbow-tinted oil.

I took some photos in the store and felt like a spy again. The store attendants were dressed in Ferrari race-car jumpsuits and watched customers try on Ferrari shoes in the mirror. Upstairs there were pieces of Ferrari engines, chunks of the auto body and underbody sprayed with sponsoring logos like "Shell". The pieces were clean but looked "used". A lot like the armor and weapons, and even art, displayed in the Palazzo Ducale of Venice. The things that made Venice rich and powerful a long time ago. Things that allowed them to fund such great art, architecture, and culture.

It's really sad that I have to go back to California. "Molto Triste" I keep thinking. I'd rather not go, to be honest. I like it here. I'm really scared. Not sure when I'll return. Frightened that everybody and everything will be the same back home as when I was there last. Afraid that world will be a carbon copy of some of my memories of it. I'm not the same. I don't want to go back to the same world. Maybe nobody will notice me. Maybe nobody will know that I'm nolonger gone. That would probably be even sadder. I do miss people, too; hopefully those folks will remember me as much as I do them.

Ever been in that place where if you're honest you sound pointed and jaded, but if you don't say anything you know your being dishonest? That's where I'm sitting. Lights fade to black, sound fades to silence.

I think it's the mind that puts up walls. If I were a doctor I'd prescribe to everybody: "Let your spirit soar, be free! Get the heck outside and take a really long walk!" But then again, I'm not a doctor, just a student. Everything to me looks like a big question mark.

"Aiuto!"

News: Worldchanging.com on "ZEDstandards"

I like this a lot. Worldchanging.com recently posted an article about the "ZEDstandards" by the architecture/development firm ZEDFactory in the UK. And it's community-oriented.

Writes worldchanging.com:

"Like LEED, the ZEDstandards presents a checklist of various sustainability criteria. These criteria are based on the group's experience with the BedZED project, and hit many of the important points about Bright Green cities we've identified here over the past two years, including product-service systems, sustainable transit, and high density development; the only real missing element is a recognition of the value of "smart" environments. The most recent version of the ZEDstandards checklist can be found here (PDF). Details on the process can be found in the 2004 introductory document "Operation Step Change" (PDF), and the "Roadmap to 2050" document (PDF). The rules have less to do with how the homes are built (although that's there, too) than with how the communities are built."

Read article: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003762.html

Olive Harvesting in Nugola

This past Venerdi (11-11-2005), I went with some schoolmates to a villa in Nugola, outside Livorno (southwest of Florence, near Pisa) to go olive harvesting. I documented my day and uploaded the photos. You can also see it as a slideshow.

The whole journey was rediculously beautiful. The view looking out from the villa was unreal, as if painted or pulled from a fantasy book. After we were greeted by the very nice family living there, we went to work. Picking olives isn't easy, but someone has to do it. While working we were offered a snack of toasted bread with olive oil--oil from last year's harvest. The family, who inherited the villa, doesn't have enough olive trees to sell their oil commercially. The olives picked are only enough for the family and their friends.

To pick olives, you simply pull off every single olive, ripe or not. Olives that will be used for olive oil get crushed entirely and it isn't important whether they are fully dark. Some of the olives, though, were darker, and these generally were from the tops of the trees we were picking. As we could feel with the increasing heat in the morning's brisk, cold air, the sun was coming up over the eastern ridge of trees; these trees were preventing the lower parts of the olive trees from getting sun. We used ladders and little rakes to pull off the higher olives. Olive trees are very durable and one can climb all over them. And if one tastes an olive from the tree, it is bitter and tart; remember, an olive one buys has been cured through a process.

We placed large nets down on the dew-wet grass to catch the olives that fell. When a tree was finished as much as we could manage, we would roll the nets to collect the olives, then pick up the olives and place them in buckets. The day's harvest was then dumped into a cellar room. The family was waiting to harvest all the olives before taking them to the press.

We joined the family for a beautiful lunch of pastas, salad, wine, pies, and gelato. The dining room had large animal heads on every wall below the ceiling; this was cool, but also quite unsettling. It is something to be eating and talking, and then to look up and notice a giant boar head or elk head peering over me. All the animals had been shot before 1900. While heading up the tower to use a bathroom, one might also notice some of the other old heads around the villa.

After lunch we travelled about forty-five minutes through the rolling countryside to the olive pressing plant. A very small facility, the whole operation was managed by one man. He had a kind sense of humor and his friends liked to point things out to us. We watched as olives went in, were washed, crushed, turned, spun, and were released as oil. Olio nuovo is very clowdy; the little bits of olive have yet to settle. To have olives pressed here, one needs an appointment. The facility also sold olio nuovo; and we bought some. The bottles filled, capped, and labelled right before us.

We said goodbye, climbed back into the chartered bus, and headed back via the autostrada for Firenze. From our windows we could see the Tuscan sun kiss the green hills of Nugola as it set behind them.

view my day...

An Update about Me

So this past weekend I returned from a week trip in Spain travelling alone. I hope to write an entry on it in the near future (I'm very busy), but for now, I'd just like to give a brief update on what I've been up to (as opposed to purely those little moments and key awakenings that breathe life into experience). My trip in Spain deeply changed me and my life, and is un molto importante punto in un grande linea di punti. If you think you know me, guess again; because, for one, I'm just starting to barely figure that out myself.

Aside from the few integral moments of my make that I've shared, I have been doing things such as travelling (such as to Venice and experiencing the Contemporary Art Biennale, Paladio, Scarpa), taking classes (italian, italian cinema, and my central focus of architecture), and working (interning with UNESCO Firenze). Each experience, and in fact, each moment of my time here, has been infinitely valuable and important. I have four and a half weeks left, the clock is ticking, and I have much to see and do!

So, I've been interning with UNESCO Firenze. Our last major project was a film short about the cultural heritage of Firenze. I helped work as a production assistant, and then I did post-production promotional design for the film. This project was great fun, and working with the director, project manager, UNESCO, Commune di Firenze (the local city government), and the friends I've made along the way, have all been truly amazing. The next part of the project is really cool: I'm working on an accredited training course about the cultural heritage of Firenze, to be offered (decembre through mid-2006) by UNESCO Firenze and the Commune di Firenze. If you will be (or are) studying or living in Florence, whether Italian or anyone else, you can take this course. In fact, the course is also designed for teachers, and will be an awesome way to learn about and then share Firenze's rich cultural heritage and history.

A key component of this course about the cultural heritage of Firenze is a screenplay contest. Yes, UNESCO Firenze and Commune di Firenze will be asking italian and foriegn students to submit screenplays about Firenze. The winning entry will then be produced into a feature length film. This is very exciting.

Now for a short jaunt over into one of my academic adventures--architecture. More than anything, I have been enjoying my studies of architecture. The other day we had our first serious crit, and I loved it and learned a lot from the critics. We have two main projects: a garden villa project that is sited in the Medici Villa of Fiesole, and a "biography" project where we focus on authors who have written about Firenze and then bring to life--by reading their books and studying and drawing sites focused within them--the experience of Firenze captured in their time, their moments, their expressions. Nel futuro, puoi fare una domande particulare di Piazza della Repubblica and Piazza Santa Croce, EM Forester e DH Lawrence. I passionately believe in drawing as a process of learning and something everyone must do, enjoy working in studio, have a great amount of respect for studio life, and am deeply interested with architectural and urban problems (problems are postive things).

While I was waiting for my flight in the Girona airport outside Barcelona, I picked up a copy of "Newsweek".

Given that I hadn't seriously read American news-media in about a month, this was a very interesting experience. America appears to be falling apart, fragmenting, and aloof. I first read the cover story on "Cheney's Cheney". The article, surprisingly liberal and full of Bush-admin bashing, also was thick-through-and-through with American-Nationalist Rhetoric. This was so bizarre: to see these "liberal" expressions and ideas parsed through such crass Islam-hating, masculine, militant, nationalistic, competitive phrases. (And to consider the current US-obsession with "framing": it's like people have become so obsessed and hyper-sensitive to framing that 1) they forget their only speaking in English, and 2) it has gotten to the point where the frames you look through are not out of whack, but you have a vision problem yourself!)

From my quasi-European, quasi-American perspective, I see the United States with a crumbling governmental face and a populace that thinks they know everything. Hell, if you think you know something feel free to do a double take in the mirror, because there is a friggin' huge world out there that is very deep and very complex and it is safe to say you don't know jack. I'd suggest this assumption of knowing something has occured because most US citizens haven't ever left their country and seen some of the world, experienced different languages, different ways of existing, thinking, and being... which in return breeds ignorance and isolationist sentiment in the mouths of both liberals, conservatives, and everybody in-between. In short, reading this "Cheney's Cheney" article reminded me of some I have encountered in the US... per esempio, militant liberals with good intentions but poor actions and experiential educations.

Even if you think you're doing the "right" (or wrong, or whatever) thing--right for culture, the environment, the economy, society, humanity, the world, your local community--please, for a moment, pull your head away from the camera obscura and take a look around... you might find that the you haven't even left the room.

News: "Environmental Studies Waived in Oil Push"

Environmental Studies Waived in Oil Push

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer

Tue Oct 18, 7:49 PM ET

WASHINGTON - In an aggressive push by the Bush administration to open more public land to oil and gas production, the Interior Department has quit conducting environmental reviews and seeking comments from local residents every time drilling companies propose new wells. Read article...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051018/ap_on_go_pr_wh/drilling_public_lands

Mangiare Firenze

Tonight, while eating dinner, I was flipping through the channels on my little portable radio trying to find some Italian music. From the bottom to the top of the dial, I was getting one American pop song after another. Ricky Martin, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, contemporary rap, rock and pop, 70s and 80s, and “classic hits”.

All of a sudden I broke into a state of deranged laughter and tears: Dio mio, what a big world we have! How ironic this is, how right it is, how different it is, how it is just such--just the way it is. If you have ever lived abroad you likely know what I’m talking about; if not, you will have to live abroad to understand.

I finished my pasta and drank my frizzante; the little earbuds I never use plugged into me. In an embarrassing display I finished off the bottom of the Nutella bottle I was savoring. I tried to get every last drop so as to not waste any of the commercial product I have become so addicted to. Nutella is very good, and very addictive.

Last night I had the biggest pang of a longing to stay here. I decided in that moment that I didn’t want to leave. I was sitting with my Italian friends, speaking my semi-broken, nicely improving Italian, drinking a mixed drink, eating free buffet in the locali right at the edge-corner of Piazza Beccaria, slowly becoming more attached to my seat.

We spoke about food in Italy and the USA; we spoke about the culture around it. We spoke about politics and culture and Italy and the USA. I was asked what the typical American cose da mangiare is. Immediately I laughed and thought of the hamburger. If they wanted to see the garbage of American cuisine look no farther than McDonalds. “We don’t really like American cose da mangiare. I can’t see the hamburger being the only thing people eat,” I heard. But I then caught myself and mentioned that USA is much more of a melting pot and its diversity is something quite special and important to remember. I love Asian food and Mexican food, for example, I said. “We love to eat sushi, and lots of it! But our Italian cose da mangiare is important to us.” Italians are lucky, I heard, to have such a beautiful flavor in their own living.

My Italian friends are very nice.

We had a very good time. After wandering the streets and getting gelato, we went to their apartment (with a truly stunning balcony view of the flood-lit Palazzo Vecchio), and socialized. I got nostalgic about my early college years. I was served a small glass of Martini. Two of my friends had very small glasses of Martini after having some apricot juice. All of them shared one beer. And before we left the apartment we had some water. This was really something, so different from the USA, such an opposite! I couldn’t help but comment on this difference, it was really quite funny. I enjoyed myself a lot.

I’m just this simple American guy abroad, the foreigner learning new ways of seeing, new ways of learning, new ways of listening, new ways of talking, new ways of walking, new ways of breathing and laughing. And to think: this is only Florence, this is only Italy, only one of the world’s infinite worlds.

This morning I went with some schoolmates on a hike into the hills behind Boboli Garden and Piazzale Michelangelo. It was not a hike in the same sense as what one would think in California; there was only a small wooded area we walked through. The walk, the roads, the views, and the air were all truly spectacular! We ended up by San Miniato, then walked to Piazzale Michelangelo, and then down to the centro.

Because of the way history has taken its course, the hills around Florence are mostly private. There are apparently more traditional-like trails up by Fiesole.

After the hike, after crossing the Arno and emerging back into the centro near Santa Croce, I asked our hike guide if she could recommend any places that are worth going to beyond the centro. She smiled and pointed out a museum to my left, a free museum we had just passed before crossing the Arno, and a garden that we had walked by on our hike… the places are here in the centro… all one must do is open one’s eyes and pay attention. Look beyond the literal and into the center of Firenze. What appears isn’t always just so.

After studying today at my university I came home and took a nap. Maybe it’s just one of those days? I should have studied more, or taken a walk instead, or at least sketched. Nonetheless, today I learned a lot in many ways. I also found much Italian music to listen to... one just has to tune into the right stations.

Centro della Citta e molto interessante problema

This weekend I've been in my head a lot; too much thinking in English.

Last night when I was walking back from my day at the Boboli Gardens I did something silly. I deliberately went and found a not-so-great gelateria in tourist territory between Piazza della Signoria and the Duomo and bought a two euro cone of two scoops of half-decent, thin and sugary gelato. My motivation: I was craving gelato but was tired of the truly fabulous gelato at Vivoli by Santa Croce. I know it sounds ridiculous (and it was) but I needed to eat bad gelato to make me want to eat the better stuff again--and lo-and-behold, it worked! After seeing the two small scoops and tasting it, I was thrilled once again of the idea to eat some of the best gelato in Firenze!

One of the beautiful things about being in a foreign country is hearing the language all around me; it's different from what I think in, but is purely natural. To hear the sound of a country in its native voice is not foreign. But, if you go to the center of the city, towards where all those gelato shops are, whether on the main side with the Palazzo Vecchio, the Uffizi and the Duomo, or the far side with Palazzo Piti and the Boboli Gardens, if you're in the center and walking through throngs of crowds, the jumble of sounds is closer to tedesco, giaponese, inglese, with a dash of spagnolo, olandese, svedese, francese, and a pinwheel of other lingue del mondo. Am I in Italy or just something that sure as hell looks like it? (The same question that Forester's book "Room With a View" begins with...)

The shape of italiano does appear, don't get me wrong! Yet usually comes either as a passing glance or very slowly from the Americano tourist asking for "cioc-co-la-to gel-a-to, gra-zi... per fa-vor-e?" The stunning Italian ragazza with an apathetic brow and perfect dark features and smiling, romantic eyes responds to his words, "what would you like?" and "three-fifty, please... thank you." This can sometimes be avoided if the day-tripping, bus-travelling, camera-swinging tourist manages his or her sounds correctly, and is able to put on a show--whether thinking he or she is convincing, or actually pulling off the magic--of looking and talking a bit more like what one came to find.

But the gelati, in my opinion, generally are overpriced for what you get if you go to places with bright florescent lights declaring themselves a "festival" or "very good!" (in english, you see it?). Vivoli, so far rated the best, in contrast, is a nice experience to find: go towards Santa Croce, it's somewhat hiding. (There is supposed to be another benissimo gelateria that’s new, but I haven’t found it yet.) Look for the circular road that's actually the foundation of the ancient Roman coliseum. The longevity of streets and infrastructure remains. Read the city through its streets...

The center of the city, in fact, the most touristy part, was actually the Roman city. If you look on a map you can see the square boarder with cut-corners, where the streets inside are composed of a tight grid. When you are inside the city fabric, and leave the grid, you can feel the difference: beyond the border streets diverge and converge at different angles, remnants of roads bend away from the city, future urban grids, and organic (in other words, not really planned) development evolve. Roman cities all followed the square-grid pattern; it was to allow Romans to easily make themselves at home while abroad (literally). Inside the city walls it was deemed to be part of Rome, outside was elsewhere. In fact, part of the ceremony of colonization was to take some Roman soil and plant it inside the new city. The Piazza della Repubblica was where the old Roman forum was, and it still contains the feeling!

You do hear Italian in the center, it's true; but in the heat of mid-day at the awe-inspiring hot-spots and their connecting streets it has thinned out, it's functionality becoming less efficient from the streets.

The center of Firenze, in many ways, has been hollowed out. What one sees in passing is a shell--a shell on the inside of the city--carved for a popoli del stranieri. I've become increasing fascinated by this phenomenon, and its resultant form and effect. The center of Firenze is a virtual space within a real, physical landscape. In fact, the image of Firenze has been preserved--from the planning codes that dictate the color of window shutters, to the type of stone used in paving, to the arguments made for pointlessly lengthening processes for inserting necessary modern communication wiring, to the placement of replica statues--to match that view so desired by the foreign imagination. ...a romantic city of beauty, art, architecture, dining, gardens, Tuscan air, and festive, glamorous Italian life!! Firenze actually is all this, but it really is quite a lot more, too. What the tourist sees is a lacquered image of plasticity held in place by its own vanity. The center of Firenze is much like Oscar Wilde's story of Dorian Grey... he fell in love with his painted image so much that he turned into its ageless visage, his painted-self aging away instead. The center of Firenze is preserved in the image of its past; a controlled picture replayed daily for the passing glance and determined stare.

Maybe the Roman obsession with control and conquering places (the Empire did it with war; the Papacy did it with religion) is part of the reason why the center of Firenze finds itself so comfortable catering to a love of its own face? Lingering architect ghosts appearing through the grid-weave of streets? Tourists captured in the contained spaces of piazzas... conquered into buying Gucci and Prada, postcards and leather totes... Of course, the center is also where some of the really hot, hot-spots are (that are most definitely worth visiting), where the guidebooks say you should go, and where the day-tripping, bus-traveling, camera-swinging tourist is led by the upheld umbrella... but maybe the center's virtuality is also generated from the structure of its urban history... in the streets, its fabric, its history, its purpose, its business. Florence is a mercantile town, you know!

The center of Firenze might sometimes be likened to Disneyland. I've heard it referred to as Disneyland in two different contexts. The second time I heard it was from a professor I was discussing the city with. We agreed that its virtuality is much like a Disneyland, an image-conscious place, controlled for the context-hungry traveler hoping to escape his or her adult elsewhere for a fun time of innocent, romantic, fantasy. The first time I heard the word Disneyland used with Firenze was from a police officer. Despite its theme-parkification, the center of Firenze is still part of a real city. Unlike the real Disneyland whose environment is made safe and managed (and whose entirety is closed for cleaning a few hours every day), the police officer in our program's orientation took care to warn us that Florence's fantasy image doesn't prevent real urban and human consequences. The only reported rapes in Florence last year happened to drunk American women.

But remember that what the tourist sees is literal... And I haven't yet said anything about the city's periphery, hill-towns, the parts farther away from the center... or for that matter what happens when really interesting cultural events happen in the city's center... there is also a pride in tourism, in being a place of such desire ...it can be good to share culture and business, too!

[Author's note: It was brought to my attention that the last sentence of the second to last paragraph can be seen to contain an extra meaning that was not intended: that it was the American woman's fault these rapes occured--this is never the case. Due to the nature of this subject, I would like to take this opportunity to explain that the problem and danger for women drinking at night in Firenze stems principally from dangerous Italian men that prowl the streets looking for American women as easy targets. (American women are perceived as easy because of assumptions about American cultural norms for drinking and social behavior that are different from those in Italy.) Unfortunately these individuals do exist, and therefore Firenze (as most cities) can be less safe than at first assumed to be. This is why the police officer told us the above mentioned statistic, to advise against an activity that may heighten a danger. --16-10-2005]

Boboli Gardens

Venerdi sono andato Giardino di Boboli--amo questo il posto!

Boboli Gardens reminded me of my childhood. The sights, the sounds, the smells. The rustling of the leaves, the children running and playing, the smell of the grass and trees. The light simply splayed on the grass threaded through the trees--strands from in-between, dancing as if a green zebra running in a dream! The heat on my face as I lie on the grass. The cool of the grass to the palms of my hands. The vistas and the little bambini running and exploring, finding new paths, investigating rocks and statues, playing ball and learning to walk with Daddy. Mothers chitchatting away while carefully guardano alla tutti bambini.

I was alone today in Boboli gardens. But as I lay on the grass thinking of those of whom I care for and have done the same for me, I realized they are all here inside me.

I really love watching the leaves flutter on the grass. There are so many of them! A million or two, maybe three or four thousand more; how ever many your imagination sees scattered on the garden's floor. ...and there are those little bugs that float in the air, swimming above the grass!!

Back in Moraga, the town where I grew up, down the street from where I live, there is a little park called Rancho Laguna. There is a large lawn there; in the evenings there are dogs and children, in the midday mothers. In the summer mornings you'll see a wonderful daycamp where I used to work. On the grass, if you ever look closely, you'll find the same leaves rolling up and around, sprinkling to the sound of the tall trees. Each dried leaf with its own unique imperfections. At Boboli I smelled one: it was pepper and pine.

This morning when I left the apartment to go to Mercato San Ambrogio, the world was different. Firenze no longer was a new place for me. This is not a bad thing, as it might seem; for it meant this place has accepted me and that I am now welcome to stay as I please. The texture of the pavement, the color of the air, the way the world looked from within me was different from before.

Boboli Gardens also made me think of UC Santa Cruz--the forest and feel of moving through such a beautiful space. In-between the ecotone, across the vista and into the forest. Boboli is very articulated but vast and complex--truth that wayfinding challenges can arise for beautiful, inspiring journeys even in highly structured space--like Villa D'Este! Make sure you take the two main axis; think about a section.

UC Santa Cruz could learn from Boboli: consider science hill, consider its axis. Think about the grace of making a north campus!

Also, one last little thing... the other night I did an interview with UCSC’s City on a Hill Press regarding the UCSC 2005 Long Range Development Plan. If you're interested in thinking about some of the things I think are important to think about on this topic: importance of academic planning and relationship to physical planning (research Strategic Futures Committee, Master Plan for Higher Education, changes in proposed populations), the campus site and environment (research Thomas D. Church), the college system and student-life community (research Kerr and McHenry), the feel of the campus' form (compositions, decentralized centers, wayfinding, natural-built interweave), the irony of comparing today's idea of "sustainability" with the "original vision" (research 1963, 1971, 1978, 1988, 2005 LRDP land-use program, concepts, and principles), architectural diversity (research each UCSC college), the importance of planning principles for design (research 1963, 1988, and 2005 LRDP principles, 1993 LRDP implementation program, consultant, admin, staff interpretations), context and city (research the City of Santa Cruz, Monterey Bay, and the University of California), the importance of flexibility within the LRDP as a planning framework, and tracing continuity, evolution, assumptions, and interpretations. Also pay attention to the paths of infrastructure (all kinds) and how they structure the order of things to come.

How do you make Tirimisu?

19-9-2005

Lunedi: Tonight I had my Italian cooking class! It was amazing. We made from scratch Ravioli di spinaci al burro e salvia, Tagliolini al pomodoro e basilico, Tagliatelle ai peperoni, e Tiramisu!!

I was in the group that made Tirimisu, then the Tagliolini and Tagliatelle. The group next to us first made the dough, and then we all cranked it through a small hand-crank pasta machine (Imperia is the brand of the machine; excellente). Our dough was egg dough made with simply eggs, flour, salt and olive oil. In fact, the flour used was half white flour and half hard wheat flour called semola.

To process the dough into the pasta, we used the hand-crank machine to flatten it. First we ran it through ten cranks at setting one, then put it successively through settings two through five, then floured both sides, cut it in half, and cranked each dough half through setting six. We then let the dough sit for a little bit, then placed on the attachment for turning the flat, long and silky soft dough into pasta noodles. Taking turns we fed the pasta dough into the machine while cranking… and out came beautiful noodles!! We first made the taglionini, then the tagliatelle. The tagliatelle noodles are smaller, like angel hair, quite graceful and delicate looking! When making pasta it is very important to separate and toss lightly the noodles with a bit of flour to keep them from sticking to one another. (If you wish to cut the pasta with a knife, put a lot of extra flour over each side of the flattened dough and roll it up loosely; then cut the roll into the desired thickness and unroll into noodles!) Separate and spread the noodles out on your marble table-top. (Use marble because it is porous (has small holes) and thus can be easily washed. The only thing you should keep away from marble are foods such as lemons and lemon juice because the citrus is corrosive to the marble and eats it away.) Lucky for me, the table-top in my apartment here in Firenze is marble, so I can use it to cook!

Making Tirimisu is incredibly easy and fun, and requires no baking. The simple ingredients needed: eggs, mascarpone cheese (this is from cows and is probably one of the fattiest and heaviest cheeses), sugar, Savoiardi biscuits (or any simple, plain cookie), coffee (or whatever you prefer, you can use cherry sauce, chocolate, etc; it's is what the biscuits are to be dipped in), and cocoa powder (to dress the dessert). If you're curious, a recipe that serves otto: cinque uovi, cinquecento grammo formaggio di mascarpone, centocinquanta gramma zucchero, duecentocinquanta gramma biscotti, tre decilitro caffe, e dieci gramma polvere di cacao.

First take your eggs (usually roughly one egg for two people) and crack them over a large bowl. The game is to make sure to let the egg whites go into the bowl but not the egg yolks: toss the egg yolks back and forth in the split shell halves to shake out the whites; then toss the yolks in a second bowl. Add the sugar into the egg yolks (don't be bashful, add really heaping spoonfuls!) and beat lightly so to make sure it becomes soft and smooth; do so until it becomes light yellow (actually you can beat this as long as you want). Once at the desired color and consistency, carefully add the mascarpone cheese to create cream. Don't whip this new combination too fast or too long, or else the result will be full of chunks of butter that have formed! On the other hand, for the egg whites, it's okay to whip them into fluffy clouds! Then slowly and delicately pour the whipped egg whites into your cheese, sugar and egg yolk mix... do this slowly in order to keep the egg whites fluffy; we want to retain the air-filled pockets. Whip carefully by taking your spatula and running it under the mix and then bringing it to the side and out to the top--this method helps to retain the air and volume.

Next is the construction stage: take out a fairly deep dish (preferably a clear one so you can see your layered formation from the sides; but we used foil tins which work, too!) and splat down and spread out a little bit of our creamy egg and cheese fluff to keep the final structure from sticking to the bottom of the dish. Now get to those biscuit cookies and dip each one into a bowl of coffee (or whatever you'd like) till soaked well but not falling apart. Place the biscuits down in your dish as a neatly-laid foundation. When finished, pour in a nice layer of egg and cheese cream mixture to neatly cover the biscuits. Layer this with another spread of the coffee-soaked biscuits, this time in a perpendicular pattern from what you laid down at the bottom. It is important to place this biscuit layer in a perpendicular pattern not for taste but for presentation: it keeps the tirimisu from falling apart when served!! Pour over the second layer of biscuits another layer of egg and cheese cream mixture, again generously covering the entire level. At this point you can call it quits or add some chocolate chips or something else for fun and add more layers. We let it chill with our four layers, and placed our fresh Tirimisu in the fridge for a couple hours. Usually you'd want to leave it in the fridge for at least three… heck, even leaving it overnight to eat the next day works well, too! (In fact, you can save the Tirimisu (covered, of course) in the fridge for a couple days and it will keep. Tirimisu also freezes very well for keeping longer.) In any case, after leaving in the fridge for a few hours, take it out and sprinkle the top with your cocoa powder... now it's ready to be devoured with delicate grace at the end of a long and filling Italian meal! :)

While slowly and consciously eating the pasta we made, something occurred to me. It first came to me while I was turning the pasta around, looking at the sauce's colors and the texture seen from the light. I was savoring the bell pepper fragments sprinkled over its orange-reddish hue layered above its egg-yellow pasta. I'm sure you've heard of the phrase "the joy of cooking"? Cooking is promoted for all and should be embraced by all... so why not think of architecture and space the same way? Why not, "the joy of architecture"? "The joy of space and place?" Why isn't architecture appreciation promoted as much as food? It should be!! Architecture, like food, is something experienced, used, and needed by all. Fall in love with architecture's delectable tastes; savor, satisfy and share... just like cooking.

...And on the same note, at the beginning of my program here in Firenze, one of the professors in the welcome reception spoke of "SLOW LOOKING": like Slow Food, look and inquire about what ingredients went into the artwork and architecture!

Roma con classe di Architettura

18-9-2005

Io gli amici!

Mi sono divertito in Roma questa fine-settimana nonostante ho nostalgia di casa e stanco. Il scorso notte a viaggio, sono andato dormire in anticipo. Oggi, domenica, sono meglio di prima venerdi sono andato a Roma di primo mattino. Siamo viaggato in treno. (Allora, scivo adesso questo in il treno! Andiamo le case in Firenze da Roma.) In Roma a venerdi siamo andato a il Pantheon, Forum Romanus, il Campodeglio, San Ivo (ma cuiso), e Trastevere per la cena. A sabato siamo andato Tivoli per vedere Villa D'Este (anche siamo mangiato il pranzo a villa D'Este) e Villa Adrianna. Due molto favorito posti a mondo! Villa D'Este, e specialmente Villa Adrianna faccio abitare! Ambiente e molti belli!! Siamo viaggiato a piedi a l'autobus in grande il piove da Villa Adrianna. Il temporale con il tuono e il lampo! Il viaggiare l'autobus molto interrestante. Molti ragazzi con aspetto interrestante!

A domenica, oggi, siamo andato a la chiesta San Carlo alle Quattro Fontaine di Borromini. Sono amore questa chiesta e l'architettura di Borromini. Oggi, sono avuto mesa in San Carlo alle Quattro Fontaine! Anche sono andato il pranzo con solo a la piccola piazzeria adjacente il Pantheon. Sono andato quello la pizzeria scorso estate in 2004. Le Pizzi e economica e molti beni! Anche sono andato mangiare bennissimo gelato a Giolitti's (a vicino Piazza di Monte Citorio.) Sono mangiato il pistaccio, la muca, e il caffe. Scorso estate sono abitato in Piazza di Monte Citorio.

fountain at villa d'este


san carlo alla quattro fontane

Adesso questo e fine scrivo me casa in Firenze con la cena! La cena e Nutella, tofu, un'aqua--ho poco cose da mangiare, ma bene! Scrivo in l'italiano e sfida e divertimento! Grazie per legge questo! Ciao! -Matteo

Studio Vino… il perfecto!

Lunedi, 12-9-05

On Lunedi I had wine and olive oil tasting class. Really amazing! (I'll write soon about my past fine-settimana and settimana in a little bit). We walked from the Villa Rossa (mio scuola) at 17:00 to a fine wine shop on the via near the Duomo between its northern side and Piazza Santasissima Annunziatta.

To hold a wine glass, always hold its stem never the cup. The reason to not hold or touch the cup is two-fold: for one, touching the cup leaves fingerprints and this isn't pretty looking, and secondly, your fingers heat the wine if touching the cup. Heating the wine with your hand is usually unwanted but can sometimes be positive if your wine is too cold. And speaking of temperature: white wines go in the fridge, while reds should be kept at room temperature.

Roll the wines in the glass in front of something white so you can see the color best. Roll it in the glass to the light. Smell the wine. Look for different smells. In the first wine we had it smelled like pears and apples along with grapes. There are pears and apples grown in the region where these grapes are from, but the wine is pure grapes. One of the reds had a very woody and smokey smell and taste--the grapes for this wine were fermented in a particular region's oak barrels. The reason why cheese goes well with wine is because cheese has a lot of fat and wine contains alcohol. The fat coats the inside of the mouth and the alcohol washes it down. We had cheese with our white wine, and salami (Chianti salami and another variety) and raw bacon with our two red wines. Chianti is the region between Firenze and Siena. Chianti Classico is actually the name of the northern part of this region.

The term Chianti Classico refers to a specific recipe for wine, the region, and, of course, a feeling! The best wine holds the special light purple banner label with the DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) on it. True Chianti Classico has the black label of the black rooster. Why is there a black rooster on Chianti Classico wine? Florence and Siena have a fierce rivalry and in order to settle the dispute of where the boundary between the province of Florence and the province of Siena was going to be after the reunification of Italy, the decision was made to have a horseback rider from Florence and Siena ride from each city and where they met the boundary would be. To make sure each rider started at the same time, the riders would leave when a rooster cried at the break of dawn in each city. Of course, as I was told, Florentines are clever and smart, and they decided to starve their black rooster for three days prior to the race. And what happened? The rooster didn't cry at dawn, it cried four hours before dawn! And this is why, we are told, that the boundary between the provinces of Florence and Siena is closer to Siena than to Florence!

How does wine get its different colors? Does red wine come from light or dark grapes? Red only comes from dark grapes, but white wine can come from both dark and light grapes; reason being that the color in the wine actually comes from the colored skin of the grape. Ever peeled back the skin of a grape? What is underneath is light, mostly colorless grape flesh. By stripping away flesh from the grapes, varieties of wine colors can be achieved, including white from dark grapes.

I also learned a little about olive oil production. Olives, when picked off the trees are spicy and mostly unpalatable. To create the olives one buys that are soft and juicy, the olives are set in brine. Extra Virgin olive oil comes from olives that have been pressed just once--highest quality with the thickest consistency. Virgin olive oil has been pressed twice. And third press olive oil is even lesser quality. The reason people would even consider to press the olives more than once (when it lowers the quality) is that by doing so it can double the production. Fresh pressed olive oil contains all the stems and pits and skins; these then come out through filtration.

I highly recommend you come out to Firenze and Tuscana and taste some wines! I'm hoping to go wine tasting around Tuscana and Chianti! You can join me if you're in the area!


Anche, Lunedi notte I met up with my friend Tony Laidig from Santa Cruz (whom I also met up with on Sabato notte) and we went out to dinner. Mangiamo bene!! After quite a bit of wandering in an attempt to find a restaurant recommended to me, we finally found it and wow was it worth the curious, winding turns between Piazza della Signoria e Piazza Santa Croce!! We went to All'Aqua Alla 2 (grazie, Frank!) We shared Assaggio primi (sampler of five awe-inspiring, amazing pastas), e assaggio insalate (sampler of three incredible, mouth watering dream salads), e Florentine steak with orange on foccacia... oh my God, so amazing. While I'm a vegitariano in Stati Uniti, I told myself I could break rules while abroad... a very good idea... the steak was so tender and the orange and soaked to perfection, soft foccacia was a perfect meal! :) Bene!!

All'Aqua Alla 2's interior was also extremely beautiful; a nice aesthetic of clean and sharp with a touch of eclectic fun made from many plates hung on the walls, each with a different drawing or piece of writing scribbled onto it. While waiting in line the owner gave everyone a shot glass of wine to enjoy. And once we were finished, Tony and were kindly given a shot glass of Limonata to drink.

While we were finishing our meal a trio of special polizia sat down at a table near to us. The owner of the restaurant then offered to pay for their meal; and they accepted. The owner seemed like a wonderful man who works extremely hard to maintain his excellent restaurant.... a restaurant to inspire the senses and imagination… a restaurant for a future of food and relationships!

Since this was the first time eating out after the wine tasting class I had earlier that day, I took every moment to enjoy the wine, to swirl the glass, to smell the Chianti, to taste its sensual dark cherry-red touch, and to slowly eat with its refreshing zest down the sides and back of my palette. When walking back home from the restaurant with Tony, I remarked that I felt perfect after that meal. I wasn’t full as if bloated or that I couldn’t eat anymore. I was full in a naturally satisfied sense. Satisfied in the sense that I just felt excellent, and was where I wanted to be. Mangiare in Italia e tutto bene!